7 


THE MINISTRY CALLED TO SELF-DENIAL. 


A SERMON, 


PREACHED 


AT THE MATRICULATION OF STUDENTS 


’ 


IN THE 


GENERAL ‘THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH 
IN THE UNITED STATES, 
ON THE 


Evening of the Third Sunday in Advent, Dec. 15, 1839, 


IN ST. PETER’S CHURCH, NEW-YORK. 


BY WILLIAM R. WHITTINGHAM, D. D. 


“§T. MARK’S CHURCH IN THE BOWERY” PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 


PUBLISHED BY THE MATRICULATING CLASS. 


NEW-YORK: 
XYLOGRAPHIC PRESS, 28 ANN STREET. 


1840. 


aye 


Kadarep ev dipevt, tov rAots Kabopptcbevros, av skcrOns tdosvoacbat, dds pev mapepyov 
goTt, Kat KoyAtdiov avaretacbat, n Go\Bagov* reracbar de det rnv dcayoray sm ro motors 
Kat ovveyus emtotpepecbat, pn ror ye 6 KYBEPNHTHS xadeon: cat rore ravra exewa 
agtevat, va pn dedspevos suBX7nOns, ws ta mpoBara® burw Kat ev Tw Btw, eav didwrat avre 


BodBapts Kat cox Adis yuvatkaptoy kat waidiov, ovdev kwrAvoer’ cay dc 6 KYBEPNHTHS 


KaNEGN, TOEXE ETL TO MOLOY, AbEts ExELva TAYTA, UNDEV EKLOTOEPOLEVOS,— pntore 


Kandovyros sAderns. Ericretus, Ench. 12. 


THE MINISTRY CALLED TO SELF-DENIAL. 


St. Luxe, ix. 60. 


Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the 
kingdom of Gop. 


Tuts is a startling saying. It would draw attention from any 
speaker, under any circumstances. How much more from the 
lips of the Eternal Word, whose fiat is life, and His will law, for 
the unnumbered hosts of heaven, and the universe which He 
spake into being and upholdeth by the word of His power! _ 

From those blessed lips no idle saying ever fell. The record 
of their words has been made, we know, with reference to us and 
our salvation. Once and forever, what Jesus spake is the truth, 
the spirit and the life. 'Time has no power to change or to annul 
it: He who read the hearts of all hiscreatures, spake and placed 
his words on record to us all and for us all. Social and civil 
revolutions may alter, not do away nor lessen their bearing on 
his church collectively and its members individually, wherever 
scattered, after whatever lapse of ages. 

Humbly and reverently, therefore, brethren, as if the Redeemer’s 
gracious voice now first addressed it to our ears ; with as anxious 
interest as if it were addressed to us by name, let us inquire the 
reason and the meaning of his command, “Let the dead bury 
their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of Gon.” 

It is handed down to us in a remarkable connexion, as one of 
three answers addressed to individuals, plainly representing as 
many classes of the followers of Curist. “And it came to 
pass, that, as they went in the way, a certain man said unto 


4A 


him, Lorn, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And 
Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air 
have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. 
And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lorn, suffer 
me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Let 
the dead bury their dead; but go thou and preach the kingdom 
of Gop. And another also said, Lorn, I will follow thee; but 
let me first go bid them farewell which are at home at my house. 
And Jesus said unto him, No man having put his hand to the 
plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of Gov.” Here 
we have the representatives of the rash and inconsiderate, who 
plunge into an undertaking of which they have not waited to 
count the cost; of the lukewarm and indifferent, who suffer 
other cares to divide a heart but half obedient to their Master’s 
call; of vacillating double-mindedness, unstable‘ in a determina- 
tion of which neither the nature nor the results are duly realized. 

It is not to be believed that a connexion so wonderfully apt 
was without wise design in the good providence of Gop. The 
three incidents make up one harmonious and perfect whole. As 
parts of that whole, they are equally necessary to each other, 
equally important, equally and -co-extensively instructive. 

Yet it cannot be denied that they have been somewhat differ- 
ently regarded, in almost all ages of the Church. 'T'wo of the 
Saviour’s answers have passed into proverbs; the one as descrip- 
tive of our Lorp’s own condition while on earth; the other as 
a statement of the nature of his calling, generally to all who 
bear his name and baptismal badge, but more especially to those 
entrusted with the stewardship of his word and sacraments. 
The third, meanwhile, (that taken for my text,) with nothing to 
render it of less general interest, and application, and syrely not 
less noticeable for its form and import, has been kept compara- 
tively out of view. The others, merely declaratory, are in the 


5 


mouth of every one: this, an express command, is heard with 
listless. disregard, or shrinking apprehension, and used, if used 
at all, with the most cautious limitation and assemblage of modi- 
fying adjuncts. 

The cause of this difference is not difficult of discovery. The 
neglected answer is one of those hard sayings of the Son of 
Gop, which He has left to prove his people. It sounds in appa- 
rent discord from the general tenor of his teaching, and grates 
upon the unskilful ear too harshly to be willingly endured. That 
He who wept at the grave of Lazarus, and cared for the bereave- 
ment of his mother in his last agonies upon the cross, should return 
to the humble, reasonable request of filial piety, “ Lord, suffer me 
to go first and bury my father,” the harsh answer, “ Let the 
dead bury their dead”, is a seeming incongruity on which the 
mind loves not to dwell. It amazes and confounds us. We 
turn away from even the semblance of violence done by the 
Saviour to the kindly impulses and holy yearnings of natural 
affection, and gladly forget it in the contemplation of the harmo- 
ny of his teaching, recommending every charity that can adorn 
and soften life, with the beautiful uniformity of his conduct, a 
continual pattern of obedience and the highest exemplar of love. 

But this is not all. The very fact which gives this saying of 
our Lorp its strong claim on our attention,—its general and 
perpetual bearing and application,—has rendered it distasteful. 
If, eqnally with its two associates, this answer is addressed 
through the individual who first called it forth, to a class, a large 
class, a class never unrepresented in a Christian community, its 
harshness is more than a trait of history: it is a requisition, a 
rebuke, too often in effect a repulse, coming home to them, bind- 
ing on their consciences, registered against them in the book of 
Gop’s account. ‘They, and others prompted by a spurious and 
ill-judging charity, would willingly lessen its severity or escape its 


6 


application. ‘It had reference to the individual and the times, 
they say: ‘its force expired with them.’ But if so, why have 
men, with one consent, understood the next following reply, in 
an inseparable connexion, so differently 2 Why is it held to be 
yet as true that “he who putteth his hand to the plough and 
looketh back, is not fit for the kingdom of Gop”, as it was 
during the Saviour’s stay on earth, if it be not also as true now, 
as then, that the dead are to be left to bury their dead by those 
whom the Master calls to follow him? No, brethren, the subter- 
fuge is unavailing. Whether we will hear it, or whether we will 
forbear, it is ws whom the Saviour warns equally against luke- 
warm indifference to his call, as against rash inconsiderateness 
or timid hesitation. 

But what is the precise import of this command, as originally 
addressed, and as it bears on us? 

Ingenuity has been busy with devices for explaining away 
its seeming harshness by rendering the meaning less general in 
its range. ‘Leave the dead to themselves, has been offered as 
one interpretation: ‘ Leave to the bearers of the dead the per- 
formance of their office,’ as another. Both are recommended 
by their tendency to give the address a local and temporary 
character. Both are found untenable when tried by common 
sense and usage. ‘The means of narrowing the Saviour’s say- 
ing to the individual addressed, and the peculiar facts of his spe- 
cial case, are sought in vain. It remains applicable, necessarily, 
inevitably applicable to a class, a great division of our race. 
The spiritually dead, the dead in trespasses and sins, they in 
whom the life of the soul in Gop is dormant or extinct, are 
pointed out by the Lorp Jesus to his follower, as those to 
whom he is to leave the care that would draw off his attention 
from his Master’s call. ‘Let the dead bury their dead: Leave 
to those who know no higher claim, the discharge of the last 


? 


sad offices to thy parent’s unburied corpse: for thee there is a 
more imperative and immediate duty: the voice that shall raise 
the dead has called thee into a new, a spiritual life, and interposed 
relations higher, stronger than those of earthly parentage, with 
resulting obligations of more instant and engrossing concerment 
than attention to the deceased.’ 

No doubt the trial thus prescribed was peculiarly hard. 'T'o 
deprive himself of the last look at the remains of him who gave 
him being, nursed him up to manhood and trained him for its 
duties ; to leave his father’s corpse to the care of others, to go 
unwept, unhonoured, unattended to the tomb! In what barbarian 
age or race shall we seek the son whose heart would not be 
wrung by such a bidding? How much more must it have been 
repugnant to a son of Abraham and the patriarchs, in whose 
hallowed examples had been set a long transmitted and most 
faithfully kept law of reverent attention to the dead! Religious 
observance, national usage of immemorial antiquity, and the 
dictates of natural affection, were arrayed against the requisition. 
Surely He who knew the issues of the heart He made, had 
strong reason for putting it tosuch a test! 

But are we therefore warranted in regarding it as an isolated 
instance ? a case where peculiar need led to a peculiar demand, 
or a peculiar disposition required a peculiar trial ? 

This is forbidden by the connexion, as we have seen, and by 
the contrast between the two sreat classes of our race implied in 
the command itself. The spiritually dead are placed in op- 
position to such as live unto Gop, and it is as wing unto Gop 
that the newly called follower of Jesus is required to deny his 
natural affections, his national habits, and his conventional ties 
and obligations, that he may devote himself to His Master’s work. 

That each may devote himself, wholly and unreservedly, 
to his Master's work,——this, brethren, is to every one of us 


8 


the reason and meaning of our Lorp’s command “ Let the dead 
bury their dead.” To work out his own soul’s salvation, to 
labour for that of those dependent on him, and to glorify Gop in 
his generation by a consistent; holy and humble walk, is.a task 
assigned every individual who is named by the name of Jesus. 
It is the calling of the members of the Church of Christ, as 
such,—to which all earthly ties and obligations must concede 
an undisputed preference in their heart and conduct. The world 
has its aims and ends, 
‘as various as the roads men take 
In journeying through life ;’ 

but the Christian, who has heard ‘his Master’s voice, and be- 
come obedient to His calling, has renounced them. His occu- 
pations may, and in a degree must, resemble those of the mul- 
titude around him, but are no longer the business of his life. 
He goes about them as of secondary consequence. ‘The ends 
of his neighbour are with him mere means, and often means of 
very subordinate interest and importance, to work out the one 
end and aim of his existence. He looks far beyond the relations 
of life and the claims of society for the source of obligation to the 
duties of his station, and he finds it, in. the changeless will and 
unfathomable love of Gop, his Maker and Redeemer, operative 
with a force and intensity of which the mere man and citizen 
has had neither experience nor conceptiom: but he there finds it, 
connecting with the duties of his station, as the world knows 
them, and placing above them and before them, others by which 
those duties are sometimes. modified; sometimes superseded, and 
even sometimes contravened. | By the world, for example, he is 
is held bound to cherish his own body and those of his depend- 
ents; to lay up in store for his own and their need in future 
emergencies; and to advance his own and their ease, emolument 
and reputation, by all honourable and honest means. It is 


9 


enough for the world’s ends, and fills the measure of its rule of 
right, although all this be done in the merest self-centering egot- 
ism, or in the shallowest superficial respect for general opinion. 
‘The Gospel reveals to him a deeper motive and a more searching 
estimate, in the love wherewith Gop loved us, and requires that 
we love Him and those whom He has given us for His sake: but 
at the same time teaches him to keep his own body under, bring- 
ing it into subjection, and to train his children and dependents 
in a like course of moderation and self-denial; to count money, 
time and pains laid out in the relief of the temporally and spirit- 
ually destitute as the only substantial provision against the day 
of want; and to dread and shun riches, worldly influence and 
temporal prosperity, as fraught with dangers of the most awful 
consequence. 

My brethren, I know this is neither prevalent nor popular 
doctrine. But I appeal to you, as men and Christians, whether 
it be not the doctrine of our Lorp and Master, taught by Him 
as plainly as language can express it; enforced by His personal 
example and invariable requisitions of His immediate followers ; 
and left on record in His sacred word without a syllable of cau- 
tionary limitation or explanatory comment, Men have explained 
away the strong language of their Saviour, or when they neither 
could nor dared do so, have been content to leave it a dead, ne- 
elected letter: but there it is, in the word of Gop, on record still. 
“How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom.” 
“Tf any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take 
up his cross daily and follow me.” ‘Take no thought, saying, 
What shall we eat? or what shall we drink? or wherewithal 
shall we be clothed? for after all these things do the Gentiles 
seek: but seek ye first the kingdom of Gop and His righteous- 
ness.” ‘Wo unto you that are rich, for ye have received your 
consolation !” “Wo unto you ste are full!” “Wo unto you 


10 


that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep.” “Tf any man 
hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and 
brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be 
my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come 
after me, cannot be my disciple.”—-These are but a few of our 
Lorv’s declarations on the subject of worldly ties and obliga- 
tions. i might heap together very many more, to the same 
effect, or even stronger. Do they not furnish an extended and 
sufficient comment on His injunction, to “let the dead bury their 
dead?” Let those who receive not the spiritual life that Curist 
came to give us when He had purchased it with His blood, con- 
cern themselves with this bodily life as their main business. It 
is wisdom with them to lay up much goods for many years, 
to take their ease, eat, drink, and be merry: but we are taught 
that their wisdom is foolishness with Gop. It is foresight and 
honourable ambition with them to build houses that shall’ con- 
tinue for ever, and dwelling-places to all generations, and to call 
the lands after their own names: but we are taught to look, not 
at the things which are seen, which are temporal, but at the 
things which are not seen, which are eternal, and to seek a 
building of Gon, a house not made with hands, eternal in the 
heavens. It is love and duty with them to pamper the bodies 
of their kindred in ease and fulness, and when they die to leave 
the rest of their substance to their babes: but we are taught to 
love the soul, and nourish it with the meat which endureth unto 
everlasting life,and to make provision for our children not for the 
flesh, to fulfil its lusts, but for the immortal soul, that it may be 
enriched with treasures that wax not old, and clothed with the 
raiment of its Redeemer’s righteousness, and made sure of those 
mansions in its Father’s house which Curist has gone before to 
prepare for such as love Him and have followed Him in the way 
of humility, self-denial, reproach, and suffering. 


11 


Thus to provide for their own souls and those bound to them 
by ties of blood, kindred and society, is the one great duty of all 
who are here assembled. Let each answer for himself how far 
he has left the dead to bury their dead, and gone about his 


Master’s work. 


But for you, young brethren, who as candidates for holy orders, 
profess to be moved by the Hoty Guosr to take upon you the espe- 
cial commission of Curist to minister as His ambassadors in the 
work of reconciliation, for you the words of our Saviour have a 
meaning and application, (not more direct and true than they 
have for evey individual in this congregation, that were impos- 
sible, but) more full and strict. You are in the very circum- 
stances of the individuals to whom they were first addressed ; 
called to an especial attendance upon your Saviour, looking for- 
ward to an especial mission in His behalf. Your appearance 
here is your solemn declaration to the world, that in the orderings 
of His providence, in the counsel of His representatives, and in 
the depths of your own consciousness, you have heard the voice 
of the Son of Gop, saying, ‘ Follow me. Follow me in the 
blessed work of seeking and saving your lost fellow-beings. 
Follow me in ministering the bread of life and waters of salva- 
tion to souls ready to perish. Follow me to pass between the 
dead and the living, and stay the plague that has gone out 
against the rebellious sons of Adam from before their Gop.’ 

With some of you, I know, the world has already been busy 
and bold to plead its reasons why you should hold yourselves 
excused from obeying such a call. One day or other, it may be 
before, or it may be not until after the irrevocable step of self 
dedication has been taken, all shall be more or less tried in the 
same way. Claims of duty or affection, of interest or ambition, 
will present themselves, and conflict with your devotion to the 


12 


work you have undertaken. Gop be thanked! the condition of 
His Church among us renders the very choice of the ministry an 
act of self-denial in most who seek it. Under ordinary circum- 
stances, talents and industry are sure of better temporal remu- 
neration in any other walk of life than the ministration at the 
altar of the Lorp. Nevertheless, temptations still remain, few 
and rare in the way of ample support and popular estimation, 
many and pressing in the form of work without a workman’s 
hire, usefulness without encouragement, calls of duty at the risk 
of health or life, labour amidst and against obstacles of the most 
formidable kind, both temporal and spiritual. Such are yearly 
increasing, and must increase for many years, perhaps genera- 
tions, in our country. ‘To prepare you for them, and arm you 
against them, was my design in the choice of a subject. ‘They 
will be to you, what the young man’s father’s funeral was to 
him, specious snares spread by the enemy of souls, seeking to 
rob the Lorp Jesus of His chosen instruments, and you of your 
exceeding great reward. ‘'T'o you severally, before Gop and His 
elect angels, your Master now addresses, by His servant’s voice, 
the injunction, “ Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and 
preach the kingdom of Gon.” 3 

You, brethren, who are about to matriculate this evening, are 
entering on a course of study, discipline and devotion, by which 
you may be fitted for that most arduous and most awfully 
responsible of all human occupations, the ministry of the Gospel. 
Self-denial is required of you, to study rightly, and rightly to 
mingle with your study active zeal, and quiet devotion. You 
have acquired, it may be, literary tastes and habits, which until 
now it has been equally a duty and a delight to gratify. The 
sweetened brim of the cup of knowledge has been held to your 
lips, and solicits deep and prolonged draughts of the invigorating 
and stimulating, but, alas, too often intoxicating beverage. Far 


13 


be it from me to discourage thorough, and even discursive study ! 
There is no branch of human science or learning that may not 
be turned to profitable account by the Christian minister. They 
all subserve the ends, and do the high behests of the queen of 
sciences, divine theology. They all enlarge the student’s mind, 
and elevate his station among his fellows, and therefore tend to 
fit the pastor for his duties as a teacher and spiritual governor. 
But while they who best know the terrible accountability and 
difficulty of the pastoral charge will be most willing to allow and 
recommend a thorough furnishment with intellectual armour of 
every kind, they will also most dread the enervating, sensual- 
izing tendency of mere literary, scientific, or esthetical pursuits 
and tastes, when suffered to become a primary or even an im- 
portant object of attention. There is a sense, in which they will 
counsel the young herald of divine salvation to 


‘Drink deep of the Pierian spring ;’ 


as opposed to the superficial, maddening potations of the sciolist 
and charlatan: but let him beware of imagining that its waters 
may with impunity be mingled with those of 


‘Siloa’s brook that flows 
Fast by the oracle of Gop.’ 


The world may court the dilettante and connoisseur in clerical 
costume, and adinire his exquisite taste and practised judgment, 
his extensive reading and apt quotations; but its admiration will 
be mingled with contempt. It will regard him as brought down 
to its own level, feeding on its own garbage, drinking in of its 
own spirit. How shall the same lips discuss the merits of a play- 
wright, the skill of a novelist, or the value of a chef-d’ceuvre, and 
proclaim the judgments of the Lorp against Babylon and Tyre? 
Men will not listen, as to Gop’s messenger set over them to 
instruct, premonish, and rebuke, to him who has been sitting 


with them at the feet of their own idols. There are those, 


14 


indeed, who will tell you of the value of accomplishments, of 
polish, and of information, to win acceptance for the word of 
truth. Believe it not. ‘The truth of Gop is masked and fettered, 
not adorned, by the bedizenments of style. Be earnest. Be zeal- 
ous. Be faithful. Be yourself enwrapped in the mysterious 
themes of revelation. ‘Thus shall you command, not bribe atten- 
tion, and secure a respect, and deference, and trust, which mere 
literary attainments can never gain. 

“Let the dead bury their dead,” then, bretliren.—Let the bar- 
rister and the senator seek to clothe the transient interest and 
petty moment of their themes with the factitious value of their 
own literary reputation and cultivated style. Let the worldling 
furnish himself with prattle for the boudoir and the saloon from 
the runlets that are hourly pouring their tiny rills into the be- 
dabbled stream of literature. Let the votaries of science pursue 
their useful and dignified researches in its learned halls. They 
labour each in his vocation. You, too, have yours. “Go ye, 
and preach the kingdom of Gop.” His word has depths which 
the profoundest thought can never sound, and heights to which 
the loftiest imagination has never soared. Age after age has 
drawn from its treasure-houses, and still the stores are free to all, 
and full beyond man’s finite conception or desire. There furnish 
yourselves for your high calling. Use arts, and sciences, and 
languages, and literature old and new, as instruments to work 
withal, and when the tired faculties demand unbending, as harm- 
less recreations : but never so far forget your place in this passing 
scene, as to make them your aim, or even to associate them in 
your efforts and affections with the one all-engrossing, all-ab- 
sorbing work you have to do. 

_ For that work you are here to prepare yourselves; and Jesus, 
when he sought the doctors in the temple, has taught us to con- 
sider the very preparation as a part of the work. itself. But it is 


15 


when the time of your ‘first proving’* shall have been accom- 
plished that your season of trial shall begin. 'The companions 
of your boyhood and youth, your school-fellows and college- 
mates, will be just starting on their several paths in life. One 
shall have taken to himself a wife, another shall have bought a 
farm, a third begun to count the profits of his merchandize, and 
a fourth tasted the first delicious fruits of industry and talents 
well applied in populir applause or growing reputation. Before 
you what prospect will be opening? Penury, seclusion, con- 
tumely and opposition, it may be. An humble round of duty 
in an unattractive sphere, it must be, under any ordinary circum- 
stances—self-denial, in many of its most appalling forms, it will 
be, if you are indeed actuated by your Master’s spirit, and re- 
solved to do your Master’s work. I know the picture has its 
bright side too; and bright it is, indeed, to the eye of faith! But 
these statements are none the less true, notwithstanding. In 
some respects we, the clergy of this age, occupy a position not 
unlike that of the first propagators of the Gospel. We are laying 
the foundation of a goodly edifice in the Lorn’s heritage, for 
future times. Others may come after, and be made glad in its 
ivory palaces, and take shelter under its goodly beams of cedar: 
it is our lot to clear away the rubbish, and break up the ground, 
and lay deep and solid its foundations, and in the meanwhile 
bear the brunt of the driving storm, or the heat of the scorching 
sun, and with the one hand work, and in the other hold a 
weapon. In most parts of our country, every thing has yet to 
be done. ‘The people are to be aroused, and gathered, and 
taught, and banded, and disciplined, and fed. The merest ne- 
cessaries for Gop’s worship are to be provided, and even the 
need of them to be inculcated. 'The house where His honour 


dwelleth has to be built. The appurtenances of prayer and 


* 1 Timothy iii. 10. 


16 


praise are to be furnished. 'The poor, and the destitute, and the 
sick, and the widow, and the orphan, are to be relieved. Is it 
strange, that with all this to do, and the evil heart of man, and 
the busy enemy of souls and the god of this world to hinder, the 
support of the ministry should be ill secured, almost not at all 
attended to? I am far from thinking that in any case our 
brethren of the laity do what they can, or even what they ought: 
but when I look over the face of our land, widening and peopling 
with an almost magical rapidity, I am surprised rather at what 
is done than at what is not—when the obstacles from every 
quarter are taken into account. 'This state of things must long 
continue, and of late years has rapidly and alarmingly increased 
in prevalence. ‘There is no help nor remedy for it, under Gop, 
but self-denial in the ministry. It will be in vain to inculcate on 
the laity the duty of supporting those who are separated for their 
service in things sacred. They know it already. It is the first 
dictate of justice, honesty, and that manly fairness, which so 
generally characterizes the yeomanry of our country. ‘They 
recognize the obligation. ‘Their plea for its non-performance is, 
that they do all they are able. Brethren of the congregation, 
that plea is rarely true! Who among us does for the mainte- 
nance and extension of the Gospel the half of what was required 
of the Israelite by divine prescription for the support of his polity 
and worship, and still left ability and willingness on his part 
to add freewill-oblations and thank-offerings? Our Master will 
not hold you so excused, by the specious plea that satisfies a 
gain-loving and self-enjoying age.—But to us, my young breth- 
ren, that plea takes the shape of fact, and we must meet it as a 
fact. 

How shall this be done ? 

By beginning, at a high and commanding elevation, the course 
of conduct which shall correct the growing evil. Want of sel/- 


17 


denial is its source; a love of gain rather than godliness, of ease 
rather than privation and exertion for the service of the Lorp. 
We must go forth and preach self-denial in our lives. We must 
go forth to preach the Gospel, asking for nothing but a hearing. 
We must go forth, as our Master sent His first ministers, in faith 
that He who sent us can support us. We must be willing to 
forego the comfort of a home, and the endearments of a family, 
and the quiet seclusion of a study, for Curist’s and the Gos- 
pel’s sake. 

At this moment sixty places are advertized by the authorities 
of our Church as willing and desirous to receive the word and 
ordinances, and not one minister can be found to say, ‘ Here am 
I, send me! Is this right? Is it primitive? Is it Christian ?— 
But it is said, ‘They cannot be supported.’ Think you that 
Paul, or one of Paul’s companions, would not have found sup- 
port in the worst spot of our western wilderness? Is the Lorn’s 
arm shortened, that He cannot help in our days? Is His ear 
waxed dull, that He cannot hear? Is His promise to be with us 
_ abrogated, that He will not now bear witness to His word and 
' ministering servants ?—My brethren! I have sought diligently 
for a ground of distinction between our duty in this respect, and 
that of those who forsook houses, and brethren, and sisters, and 
father, and mother, and wife, and children, and lands, for Jesus’ 
name’s sake, in the first generation of His followers, and I can- 
not find it. Souls are precious now as then. Ungodliness, though 
varied in its forms, is as rife now as then. Satan is as busy now 
as then. Alas, yes! and he is more successful! for he works 
now on the love of ease, and the fear of want, and the dread of - 
suffering, in the hearts of Christians, even in that which should 
be the choicest of Gop’s temples, the heart of His ministering 
servant. It is want of faith that cripples us, and palsies the 


energies of the Lorp’s embattled host. It is want of faith that 
3 


18 


has converted our missionary doings’ into computations of vile 
money, and poisons the spring of life with the polluted streams 
of Mammon’s kennels. It is want of faith that swells our lists 
of unemployed clergymen, and keeps our borders bare and im- 
poverished of spiritual supplies. It is want of faith that sends 
our missionary bishops solitary wanderers through uncultivated 
deserts, and leaves the halls of our theological seminaries com- 
paratively empty, while the bar, the medical school, the engi- 


neer’s corps, and the counting house, are thronged with talent, 
energy, and zeal. 


Could these things be so, brethren, were we indeed persuaded 
of THE REALITY or GOD'S aniprna PRESENCE IN His 
Cuurcu to make His word powerful as a hammer rending the 
rock in pieces; His ordinances fertilizing as living streams, con- 
veying pardon, grace and holiness, wherever they are carried; 
and His ministers workers together with Him, in reconciling the 
world unto Himself? It was “in much patience, in afilictions, 
in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tu- 
mults, ia labours, in watchings,-in fastings,” that the blessed 
apostle approved himself a minister of Gop, and so verified his 
claim to be an “ambassador for Carist, as though Gop did 
beseech” the world “by him.” Mark it, brethren! these things 
proved him the true minister of the Master whom he followed ! 
and to his beloved Timothy it was his dying charge, to “ endure 
affliction, and do the work of an evangelist, and” so “make full 
proof of his ministry.” ‘To give our ministrations validity, the 
sure and regular transmission of the call through those entrusted 
with it, in long succession, from Curist himself, is enough. 
But to give them energy and success, to inbreathe life and spirit 
into. the outward form, to tip the tongue with fire, and clothe the 
man of flesh with light like that which shone from the counie- 


nanc: of Moses when he had been upon the mount, something 


19 


more is requisite—the work of Gov’s Spirit in a sincerity and 
intensity of faith, and love, and zeal, which can show them- 
selves to others only in the highest forms of self-denial. That men 
can appreciate. Prove to them a call of Gop, like that of Aaron, 
and they will speculate, and cavil, and wonder, and at best ad- 
mit it with cold assent. Deliver to them a message like that of 
Jonah, of impending destruction, present repentance and offered 
mercy, and some will mock, and many turn away in heedless 
apathy. But John the Baptist, in his raiment of camel’s hair 
and leathern girdle, and the seventy wandering from city to city, 
destitute of every necessary for their undertaking, draw attention 
and strike home to the beholders a conviction of reality. They 
can understand that a messenger must have good assurance of a 
mission which is to be'so executed. ‘l'hey perceive that he is 
actuated by views and motives higher than their own, and are 
thus disposed to place in. him that confidence which a nobler 
nature always commands from its inferiors. Curiosity and re- 
spect combine to induce them to lend a listening ear, and they 
are willing to be taught by one whom they feel to be above 
them.* 

Gop forbid, my brethren, that I should urge this as a reason 
for extraordinary self-denial in the ministry! I do but state it, 
as the most desirable and sure consequence of obedience to the 
command of our Divine Master. It is His will that His minis- 
tering servants should be so tried, and that will makes the result 
a blessing to His Church, and a tenfold blessing to their own 
souls in the exceeding great reward of enhanced success. ‘I'he 
trial may be various in its form. It will not always come in the 
shape of want, and isolation, and sundered ties, and checked 
affections. ‘There are other more insidious and dangerous snares 


attendant on the easier paths, against which the minister of 


* See Note at the end. 


20 


Curist needs to be doubly vigilant, that in humbleness of heart 
and holiness of life, he may show out of a godly conversation his 
unfeigned faith. But when, as to many of you must be the case, 
the call of the Redeemer is to follow him in the work of love and 
mercy, through privations and distresses, at the’cost of sacrifices 
which men call unreasonable and cruel, at the risk of being 
deemed enthusiasts and rash—brethren, érust your Lord! “let 
the dead bury their dead, but go ye and preach the kingdom 
of Gop.” 


NOTE. 


A spare leaf tempts the writer to add an illustration of a remark made on a 
preceding page—that men are willing to be taught by those who come to them in 
" self-denial. | 

On the festival of St. Matthias, six hundred and thirty years ago, the son of a 
merchant of a little mountain town in Italy heard read in the gospel for the day 
the words, “Provide neither gold nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrip 
for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves.” From that 
day forth he had neither home nor property, change of raiment nor money to pro- 
vide it. He wandered literally as a stranger and pilgrim on the face of the earth, 
depending continually for his next meal and his night’s lodging on the Providence 
of Gop working in the charity of man. He did more. Smitten with the love of 
his condition, he found means to engraft his feelings on the minds of others, and 
to bind them with himself in joint vows of utter destitution, perpetual celibacy, 
and implicit obedience to an ecclesiastical superior. In ten years, this penniless, 
friendless outcast had gathered a band of five thousand sworn disciples. At this 
day, seven thousand five hundred communities, numbering more than two hun- 
dred thousand inmates, follow his example and own his law; and in all nearly 
three millions of our race already gone to their account, shall rise up at the last 
day to bear witness, for weal or for wo, to the influence of that example and the 
moral efficiency of that law. 

These are momentous facts. Duly weighed, they will be found to show that 
the day shall come, when Francis of Assisi shall be found to have had more influ- 
ence on his kind, than the widest wasting spoiler that ever ravaged the earth’s fair 
surface, and built himself a memorial out of the miseries of his fellow beings. 
Conquest, with its attendant minions, slaughter, fire and famine, does but affect 
transiently the millions whom it causes to suffer. To any of them, it is but a 
momentary blast, over and forgotten when the long vista of eternity opens up to 
view. Meanwhile the quiet victories of the Italian friar have been going on, sub- 
jugating body and soul to a sway meant to be, and in its consequences sure to be, 
eternal. Those who shed their life-blood for an ambitious leader, are by the very 
act set loose from his control for ever. The thousands of thousands who have 
been hurried to the place of the departed from the battle fields of Napoleon, now 
look back on far other than his designs and plans as the sources of their endless 
happiness or misery. But the rule of the Franciscan binds him to a life-long 
servitude in order to an eternal continuance beyond the grave. The hour will 
never come when its effects shall have passed away. They will abide, and grow, 
world without end. 


22 


Is not this a fearful contemplation? How shall we account for the phenomenon 
of power like this wielded by a mortal man over the immortal souls of his fellow 
men? Not, surely, by the shallow sophism of those who shelter their own igno- 
rance or sloth by the remark, that he was the impersonation of the spirit of his 
age, the creature of circumstances, owing to them alike his origination and the 
continuance of his sway! What! did the fifth century breathe less of the spirit 
of asceticism than the thirteenth’! Were the foundations of society less shaken by 
the overturn of the old Empire of the West than by the Guelf and Ghibeline con- 
tests of an Italian priest and a German potentate? Have the strange vicissitudes 
that have new moulded society and recast all its forms in Europe since the thir- 
teenth century, uniformly chanced to favour this one institution of religious men- 
dicancy, and it alone? Each more absurd than the other, the suppositions confute 
themselves. We must seek elsewhere than in external circumstances for the birth 
of a spirit of such surpassing and enduring might. 

‘We may find it, in the text of the preceding discourse, and in the many pas- 
gages of kindred import that the New Testament contains. It was a word of Gop, 
misconstrued and misapplied, but still a worp‘or Gop, believed and acted out, 
that was mighty to prevail over the dictates of nature, the ties of life, the tyranny 
of custom, and the shock of change and time. The Saviour’s call to leave all and 
follow Him, was the charm that wrought in Francis and by which he wrought on 
others, to the accomplishment of such wonderful results, 

It wrought, indeed, not unto life. Like the knowledge of Crrist made manifest 
by Paul, its savour was of death unto death in them that perish. In the narrowness 
of their own spirit, they narrowed the significancy of their Lorn’s instructions, 
and expounded them as literal rules, for uniform, unvarying observance. Thus 
they lost the spirit of the Gospel, and made the message of salvation through free 
grace an onerous and dead law of works. One unalterable standard applied to. the 
outward man, was their measure of Christian character and attainment. The 
kingdom of Gop, instead of righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, 
became a system of meats and drinks, and external garb and bodily observance. 
The result of substituting rules for principle, and forms for spirit, showed them= 
selves in pride, vain glory, and base hypocrisy and fraud, on the one hand, and in 
blind, brute-like obedience, and the most marvellously stupid credulity, on the 
other. 

But shall we therefore join in the laugh, so long and loud, which has been raised 
against these deluded victims of superstition ? 

Apart from the sobering consideration that their delusions concerned eternal 
interests, and those of millions, and that seas of blood and tears may at the last 
great day prove of less serious moment than what we now look upon with gibes 
and merriment—apart from this, we may find something to check the rising laugh, 
in the principle which lay at the root of their strange plant, and in its application 
to ourselves. 

That principle was THr REALITY OF ETERNAL INTERESTS, and its consequence, 
the comparative utter insignificance of every worldly possession and pursuit, 


5 a al 


20 


This, it will be said, we all admit as well as they. It is part of our daily pro- 
fession, the fundamental article of our faith. 

It is so. The difference is this. We profess it, and say it in our creeds. They 
ACTED on it. y 

It may be that it was derangement of intellect that made the father of the 
mendicants apply to himself the charge of the Saviour to the seventy. But who 
will have the hardihood to deny that he was sincere in his mistaken obedience ? 
That sincerity it was that gave him power and contagious zeal; and its perpetua- 
tion, even though only as a grain of mustard seed buried in fraud and superstition, 
has permeated the whole mass, and kept life in it to this very day. 

When shall our holier cause, the advocacy of a pure faith and spiritual life given 
of Gop for the salvation of our perishing race, free as the air to all, if they will but 
hear and believe, and be converted to the Lorp and live—when shall it find agents 
as much in earnest, and therefore as successful? Oh, the burning disgrace, that. 
they who pander to Rome’s usurpations and corruptions, should exceed us in the 
best qualification for the work to which we profess to have a calling, derived from 
the crucified Redeemer through the apostles and martyrs who sealed pis testimony 
with their blood ! 


SWEET iS THE SMILE OF HOME; THE MUTUAL LOOK | 
WHEN HEARTS ARE OF EACH OTHER SURE} 

SWEET ALL THE JOYS THAT CROWD THE HOUSEHOLD NOOK, 
THE HAUNT OF ALL AFFECTIONS PURE} 

YET IN THE WORLD EVEN THESE ABIDE, AND WE 
ABOVE THE WORLD OUR CALLING BOAST: 

ONCE GAIN THE MOUNTAIN TOP, AND THOU ART FREE: 
TILL THEN, WHO REST, PRESUME 3 WHO TURN TO LOOK, 


ARE LOST. 
KEBLE. 


